


Older Than Words

by orphan_account



Category: Keeping the Faith (2000)
Genre: Christmas, Ficlet, Multi, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-02
Updated: 2005-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 06:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Older Than Words

It was night. It was always night when this happened. Snow piled up against the window of their fifth-story apartment.

"If you ignore a thing ferociously enough, it goes away. It's the same with faith. If you believe in something ferociously enough..."

"Don't finish that sentence, Bri."

Brian turned his head slightly and smiled. It was a tiny smile that narrowed his eyes, made wrinkles bloom around them. It transformed his face, every time. When he smiled like that, you couldn't tell what he might say or do next. Even after all these years Jake sometimes thought there might be a barb or a blow following that smile, coming between him and Brian and shattering the world.

Still sometimes it made his belly cold, and his face grow hot.

"Why not, Jake? Belief is a good thing. Faith is a good thing."

"It's not the only thing that makes God real. If you think that..."

"That's just it, isn't it? If you believe it's only belief that makes God real, you've already stopped believing."

Brian got this way every once in a while, every few years.

Anna walked in with the bottle of scotch, silent and tight, and poured them all a drink without a word. Jake thought of his mother. Women had silences that went beyond words.

Men have words they speak to disguise the absence of completely different words.

The grandfather clock struck eleven on the wall. Anna's arm slipped around Jake's shoulder as she sat next to him. He leaned into her warmth with an appreciative grunt. Her strong hard fingers slipped into his hair.

She looked at Brian, seated in his chair by the fire. Jake didn't have to look up to know it, from the way she was sitting taut like a bow. He closed his eyes and imagined it, her face devoid of any sign of laughter, speaking volumes with her silence. He could see Brian's tiny smile breaking. Softness would creep into his eyes, and the lines around them would clear.

Jake closed his eyes tighter. It was like being the smallest bird, and swallowing the moon.

Should've put the bottle on the tray, Jake thought later. Anna's hair smelled like fresh shampoo, but he smelled sweat on her skin between the hair and the collar of her shirt. His knee was caught between her and Brian's thighs. She was moving between them, up and down like a runner testing her muscles and he could see a flash of red against a blue sky, a girl's jumper torn on a fence and abandoned seventeen years ago.

He could imagine her breath. It would be coming hot and fast now, against Brian's mouth.

"Jake, Anna and Jack," he heard Brian mumble. "Jewish, Irish and Scotch." Jake leaned forward and like so many times before Anna pulled him into their embrace.

Brian tasted like whiskey on the lips, like ice in the bottom of the belly, like fire in the lungs.

They say anything could happen, in these twelve midwinter days.


End file.
